Hockey: The most awesome thing ever. Except babies. And weddings. So… third most awesome thing ever? But hockey happens with far greater frequency in my life than weddings or babies, so I am back to most awesome thing ever unless it is directly competing with a wedding or a baby. It’s fun to watch, it’s fun to play, it’s license to totally scream at either your TV or the players directly if you’re at a game. It’s passion and excitement and grown men who are occasionally hot smacking into each other at top speeds. It’s awesome.

Adoption: I think adoption is one of the most loving and selfless things there is, and I think it’s way undervalued. I think it’s often seen as being second best, with the “best” thing being a child you created yourself. As someone who wants to be a parent, I could, God willing, get pregnant and have a kid. Or, since I don’t care all that much about passing on my genes, I can decide that love is love and family is family. It doesn’t matter how it became what it is, the important part is that *it is*.

Faith: Something that sometimes gets a bad rap because people confuse it with “religion”. For me, it’s about what you believe at the core of your being and following it, because it’s the right thing. Faith is the personal part. The part that no one can define for you. People can tell you what to believe but they can’t force you to really believe it. Faith is the part only you can do.

Paperclips: Oh jeez, do you really want me to get started? Paperclips are useful tools. As such, they should be easy to use. They should be sorted according to size, so you can, at a glance, grab exactly what you need and move on with your day. They should not be made of plastic and therefore easily breakable. They should not have little grippy ridges on them that make them hard to slip on and off (and yes, I GET that the point of the grippies is so it won’t slip off. No.), nor should they have a plastic coating. They can however be in pretty spirals or other shapes as long as they hold my paper and slide on and off easily. Oh, and as long as they don’t get all stuck together easily like a damn barrel of monkeys.

Theater: Something everyone should experience. The arts are just as important to American culture as sports. Some of it is so bad you’ll still be talking about it years later. But a lot more of it is so good for your soul that your heart will still swell when you think about it. It will surprise you often and delight you almost always. And the times when it doesn’t, go out for drinks with your friends afterwards and rip it to shreds. And if you are into musicals, as I am, it provides endless singalongs while stuck in traffic.
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